Padlet has made some changes to its website, making it even easier to facilitate collaboration in the classroom. If you are new to Padlet, it is a great tool to use for displaying student work, class discussions, and more.

Some new features are the ability to clone a Padlet. This is great for teachers with multiple class periods. There is also the ability to switch between two Padlets now. Click here to read about all the new features.

Our Educational Technology department is offering face-to-face and virtual training opportunities for SJCSD teachers and employees. See below for more details, and the link to registration in Sungard. In addition to these trainings, we are happy to meet with you one-on-one or in small groups for any ed tech needs you have this summer.

Edmodo is a great tool for gathering formative assessment feedback from students. Until now, it was difficult for teachers to share quizzes with other teachers. Edmodo has added this time-saving feature!

To share a quiz or assignment, simply attach a Quiz from your Library to a Note. Any teacher-recipient will be able to add it to their Library and assign to their students. See here for more details.

Donorschoose.org is an organization that funds projects for public school classrooms. Teachers can submit projects for technology, books, furniture, and any other classroom supplies. Donorschoose is a highly rated charity with 94.2% of money going directly to classrooms, while 4.4% goes toward fundraising. 72% of projects posted are fully funded!

Donorschoose currently has several match offers for teachers in Florida. These offers fund half of a teacher’s project once it is submitted.

Maker Project Match Offer– Infosys Foundation USA is providing match funding for projects asking for up to $500 in supplies for maker projects. Students then use these materials to enter the Infy Maker Awards Contest. Click here to find out more.

Microsoft just released a new add-in for their OneNote Class Notebook Creator. This add-in allows teachers to create a class notebook directly from OneNote. Teachers are also able to add and remove students, assign sections and content to classes, and review student work directly from their OneNote notebook. Click here to learn more about this add-in.

We are excited about some new features in three of our favorite programs.

OneNote

OneNote released their Learning Tools add-on last week. While originally created for students with dyslexia, this great tool can be used by anyone. It includes a reader with features for syllabification, parts of speech, and more. There is also a dictation tool that students can use as well.

Plickers

This week Plickers released their new Scoresheet reporting. This enables teachers to analyze classroom performance on multiple questions. Learn more here.

Edmodo

Edmodo now integrates with our Office 365 accounts, both for students and teachers. What does this mean for you? You can now use your Microsoft 365 credentials to log in to Edmodo. To get started, click here.

Microsoft has released some updates for OneNote, which will benefit teachers and students in our classrooms. OneNote online now allows students and teachers to insert audio files, pictures, and document attachments. The OneNote iPad app also has audio capabilities now, and more tagging options. At this time these features are only working in the Firefox browser.

How can these features be utilized in the classroom?

Elementary students (or struggling readers) can practice reading fluency by recording themselves while reading, and then play back the recording to self-assess their progress. Students can continue to practice reading and recording, until they achieve the desired level of prosody, rate, and accuracy.

Students in all grade levels can use the audio feature to demonstrate their knowledge of standards and topics they are learning. Students can type, write, or insert a picture of a problem they solved, then explain how they solved the problem in their recording.

Students can use OneNote to create a data notebook, then use the audio recording feature to explain their progress toward their learning goals.

Students and teachers can use the audio feature to ask and answer questions.

Students can create a digital portfolio of their work, by taking pictures of their assignments/projects, or uploading the documents directly to OneNote.

Students can use the tagging features to tag assignments they are ready to turn in. Then the teacher can search the tag, rather than opening each student’s notebook individually.

Students can use the ? tag to ask their teacher questions about the class or assignments.

There are so many other ways to use OneNote in the classroom. We are excited about the ideas OneNote has made possible for student collaboration, organization, and curation.

You may have noticed some changes or errors in Edmodo over the last couple of weeks. They are working on developing a new and improved library, which will be launching soon. While this update is taking place, it may be difficult to add documents to folders, or for students to view folders.

In the meantime, here is the quickest way to add files to folders:
1. Locate Library items and click the checkbox on the top left (or add files to library first)
2. Click the grey “add to folder” icon
3. Select the folder

A group of educators recently created a collaborative iBook to help inspire other teachers to utilize iPads with their students. The lessons in these iBooks focus on a range of grade levels and content areas. You can sign-up here at edtechteacher.org and you will receive an email with a copy of these iBooks. Make sure you open the email on an iPad or iPhone in order to download the iBook properly. Also, some of these lessons feature the apps Thinglink and Aurasma, which are restricted for use with students in our district.